Fishermen at Magdalena Bay sell some of their fish for between 5 and 8 pesos per kilo. By comparison, dirty plastic bottles fetch 9 or 10 pesos per kilo. This means that these fishermen are literally selling their fish for less than garbage, and to break even at that rate they need to catch and sell 800 kilos per day. To make money they need to do 1,000 kilos per day, and there is no way for a small boat to maintain quality at those volumes. This is the reverse alchemy that plagues Baja fishermen: they catch something that could be worth gold, but they’re selling it for less than garbage.”

La Paz is running out of water so it’s building an aqueduct to pump it in from El Carrizal. Los Cabos is running out of water so it’s contracting with a private desalination plant to boost supply. El Triunfo has water but residents refuse to drink it; it’s still contaminated by the arsenic released by mining operations at the turn of the last century. Baja California Sur is not only Mexico’s driest state*, but the country’s second fastest growing state by population. These two trends seem to be barreling towards a head-on collision that could take an enormous environmental, economic and public health toll on the state. Whether or not that collision takes place in the future depends largely on the actions we residents take today.